Dujeous - I Witness

If rap is, as Chuck D, famously claimed, the “black CNN,” then you can consider Dujeous a crack team of investigative journalists. On a new single off their next street album, the Booth-approved crew hook up with underground stalwart Immortal Technique for an I Witness report on the situation in the streets. Over the crew’s own hard-hitting production, driven by bell arpeggios and clattering percussion, rappers Mojo the Cinematic, Rheturik and Mas D reveal what other news outlets have been keeping under wraps. In addition to the expected horrors—kids selling crack, pervasive, cop-inflicted violence…—Immortal Tech evokes subtler forms of oppression: “After they evacuated people sloppily, they asked realtors to invest in the property / The rebirth of Manifest Destiny in the South, stack chips while they trained to drag dead bodies out.” The solution? “It’s time to react, create strategic acts of vengeance.” Has this bracing, politically-charged banger got you fired up and ready to retake the streets? That’s what I like to hear. But be sure to include a trip to the local record store on your itinerary; Dujeous’ latest LP, Day In Day Out, was independently released yesterday, April 3.